Return to Ravnica

To everyone’s surprise, it appeared that Exava herself emerged from the fumes, furious and kicking. But Jace’s illusion had given him Exava’s form. He kicked and yelped, acting in character, trying to seem as furious as Exava would have at being caught by her own minions. He pointed a finger back to where Exava had been standing and summoned up his best impression of her, yelling, “Kill him!”

The spotlight swung to where Exava had stood, and the woman had been replaced with the blue-cloaked form of Jace.

Exava, wearing Jace’s appearance, tumbled backward as the guards advanced on her. Over her protests, the Rakdos guards seized her. But the enraged Rakdos warriors didn’t stop there.

“Show’s over early, little man,” said the enormous spiker, and he ran the blood witch clean through the gut with a spike at the end of his weapon. Blood catapulted out of her mouth.

The crowd at Rough Crowd cheered lustily, believing the tricky Jace had been the one skewered. In the smoky haze they did not notice Jace, in the guise of Exava, edging toward the back door.

“You be sure to check him,” he said to an axe-wielding warrior at the back door, pointing his thumb back at the wounded Exava. Then he slipped out.

As soon as he was outside, Jace dispelled the illusion over himself. He hoped that in doing so the illusion he had cast over the blood witch would last long enough for him to get a moment to breathe. Then maybe he could find a moment to delve into the blood witch’s mind again, if she was even still alive. But the back of the Rough Crowd burst open, the architecture of the club wholly unable to withstand the frenzy and bloodlust of a crowd of enraged Rakdos cultists. A flurry of howling, winged imps swarmed around Jace, converging and blocking his path.

“Where exactly did you think you were going,” said the blood witch.

The illusion had been broken, and Exava was back to her own appearance again. With one hand she clutched at a pumping wound in her stomach. The other cultists encircled them both, but gave her a wide swath.

“Don’t do this. All I need to know is where they took her,” said Jace.

The blood witch laughed a slow, rolling laugh that grew, breath by breath, to become a mad cackle. “Boy, haven’t you learned? You never say don’t to a Rakdos girl.”

She unleashed a torrent of pain magic from her fingers, slicing through the night and stabbing into Jace like claws made of lightning. Jace fell to his knees, every muscle in his body locked in the rigidity of pain, his teeth ground against each other as the pain spell speared into his body from every direction. Finally, the blood witch relented and let the spell end. Jace fell onto his hands and knees, his head sagging, sweat beading on his forehead. Arcane smoke wafted from his body.

Exava’s heels clicked against the cobblestones as she approached. Jace’s breaths heaved. Stretching the pain out of his muscles, he strained to put one foot on the ground, and push himself up to a standing position.

“Stop this now,” he said. “Tell me where she is, and I’ll be on my way.”

“Oh, honey, no,” she said. “You can’t leave without this.”

The Rakdos mage let loose another torrent of agony that crashed into Jace. He arched his back and fell sideways, slamming against the street. As the spell lasted moment after moment, he forced his lungs to breathe through the pain. He wheezed spittle through his teeth.

Exava’s spell ended, and he panted.

“All right,” he whispered. “That’s enough. We’re even now.”

Exava laughed his words. “Even? Enough? What are these words you’re saying, little man? I’m starting to think this is your first Rakdos party.”

Exava gathered power again. She made a cage of her long-nailed fingers, dripping blood from her own wound. She clenched her hands in toward each other, forming a sphere of anguish that flickered like the fire in her eyes. Her shoes clacked their way closer and closer to Jace’s prone form. Finally she raised her hands high above her head and brought the spell down like a hammer, but Jace’s hand whipped up, and the sphere of pain froze between them, halted halfway along its path, swiveling and hanging, weightless in the air. Jace turned and rose, keeping his hand out toward the Rakdos spell, fingers clawed to keep it immobile in space. He gathered himself up to his full height, stretching his stiff muscles. With the clench of a fist, he focused his countermagic, and the pain-spell evaporated.